


The Touch of Each Hand

by pellucid



Category: Farscape
Genre: F/F, Gen, gen with sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 14:12:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1229425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pellucid/pseuds/pellucid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set during "Terra Firma." I'd call this "gen with sex" because Chiana doesn't play by fandom's labeling rules.</p>
<p>Written in May 2007.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Touch of Each Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Set during "Terra Firma." I'd call this "gen with sex" because Chiana doesn't play by fandom's labeling rules.
> 
> Written in May 2007.

The second day on Earth, Rygel and Chiana come in from a swim, and Rygel's complaining about "sand in every frelling crevice, though not so bad as Dam-Ba-Da. I was shaking it out of my ears for weekens—" Chiana has seen Aeryn, jabbed Rygel in the ribs, pulled him down the hallway.

Aeryn decides to avoid the beach.

Two weeks later she changes her mind, when John comes over to watch football with D'Argo, and they're loud and drunk in the living room, and John hasn't looked at her all night. It's too late to return to Moya, and the ocean beckons, dark and quiet stretched out behind the house. She slips out the back door, leaves her shoes on the porch, feels the sand under her bare feet, cool and damp and finer than she expected.

The waves wash up over her feet, and she rolls up the cuffs of her trousers—jeans, she remembers, trying the English word on her tongue softly—to keep them dry. 

Chiana approaches quietly, but Aeryn knows she's there, even before soft squelch of the wet sand gives her away. 

"Hey," Chiana says softly, standing just outside Aeryn's line of sight.

Aeryn looks down at her own feet, watches a wave recede, pulling with it half the sand she's standing on. She wants company after all. "Hi," she answers.

Chiana steps closer, digs her own feet into the sand next to Aeryn's. "It's peaceful out here," she observes, and Aeryn rolls the word around in her mind. 

"Peace" is one of the words the microbes have trouble with. In Sebacean it's harsh, two clipped syllables, peace by force, the absence of violence always tinged by the threat of its return. Underneath the translation, she hears it in Nebari, all vowels, an inimitable diphthong. She remembers what the Nebari mean by peace—conformity, blankness, absence of independent thought or emotion—and wishes it didn't sound so enticing. She can't recall the English word and wonders if she's ever had an occasion to learn it. She decides she probably wouldn't understand what the humans mean by it anyway.

"Want to go for a swim?" Chiana asks, dragging her toe across the sand, drawing the mark of her name in the moment before the water washes it away.

It's winter on this part of the planet, but Chiana and Rygel have been swimming almost every day. "It's not too cold?" Aeryn asks, beating back the rush of panic that grips her as she remembers icy water closing over her head.

"Too cold for humans, maybe. Not too cold for us."

Chiana is pulling her clothes off, tossing them onto the dry sand, and her body is silver in the moonlight. "Come on," she says, grinning as she pulls open two buttons of Aeryn's shirt. 

She doesn't quite trust the gleam in Chiana's eyes, but she concedes anyway, pulling off her shirt, trousers, and underclothes, following Chiana into the water.

Chiana giggles, dives in as soon as it's deep enough, but Aeryn is more experimental. She learned to swim in a command carrier environmental simulation and has little experience with real bodies of water, salt and sand and fish. Her body feels light and buoyant as the waves push it gently, and part of her brain registers that bodies float better in salt water. She squashes the half-reminder that bodies also float better when they're not strapped to Prowler ejection seats.

She kicks up one foot and then the other, resting on her back, cool water sluicing over her breasts and her hair fanned out around her. Above her, Earth's moon is almost full, its brightness muting the unfamiliar stars.

Fingers close around her wrist and tug, and Aeryn swallows some water as she pulls up, disoriented. 

"Sorry," Chiana apologizes. "You were floating away."

And Chiana doesn't let go, slides her hand down to twine her fingers with Aeryn's as Aeryn spits out the salty water, coughs. They've gone too deep, and when her feet strike out she can't find the sand. Chiana kicks strongly and pulls on Aeryn's hand as they swim a few strokes towards the shore, until their feet are firm again on the bottom.

"I think this is how I like Earth best," Chiana muses, looking out into the formless ocean.

"Dark with no humans around?" Aeryn returns, smiling a little.

Chiana giggles. "Yeah, maybe." She reaches out to touch a strand of Aeryn's hair, wrapping the dark hair around her white fingers as they skim across the surface of the water and trace its line across Aeryn's arm, chest, breasts. 

"Chiana," she warns, but she doesn't step back as Chiana's other hand finds her ribs, slides down over her hip.

Chiana studies her carefully before moving closer, her body warmer than the water as she brushes against Aeryn, her mouth hot on Aeryn's collarbone. 

This is ridiculous, Aeryn thinks, but it's been so long since anyone has touched her—simply touched her—without fraught expectations or ulterior motives, and she suspects Chiana knows this. She finds herself leaning in, dipping her head to find Chiana's mouth, the kiss tasting of saltwater. 

Aeryn sighs and closes her eyes as Chiana pulls her close, limbs bumping against each other in the uncertain gravity of the waves, Chiana's leg sliding between hers as a thumb brushes Aeryn's nipple. Chiana's skin is as velvety as it looks, and Aeryn is surprised to realize she's never really touched it before.

"This is ridiculous," Aeryn whispers aloud when Chiana's fingers reach between her legs.

"Shh," she murmurs, lips nipping gently at Aeryn's earlobe. "You don't need to think about this."

And when her brain lets go, there is only water on some planet, and salty, velvet skin under her tongue, and skillful hands arousing her slowly until she comes hard, floating unmoored on the waves.


End file.
